Repeat performance

Tom Long, one of the preachers I’m tempted to steal from, points out in this issue that stealing sermons is an old phenomenon but easier to do today given the thousands of sermons on the Internet.

Probably every pastor has a good story to tell about plagiarism. I attended a pastors’ seminar years ago that included a Sunday morning visit to hear a prominent preacher. When the seminar reconvened after lunch, the first response was from one of our group who began reading from a book—uttering the exact words we had heard a few hours before. After recognizing the sermon, he had gone to a library, found a volume of Halford Luccock’s sermons and located the one that the preacher had delivered.